I can do 3MPH for an hour on the treadmill. That's a pace of 20minutes per mile. I can jog 10 minutes per mile. Where's John's magic zone?
What constitutes 'fast walking'? - Cure Parkinson's
What constitutes 'fast walking'?
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kaypeeoh
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I believe it is at the point where you no longer have to think about each step and it becomes automatic and you suddenly double your speed.
I have had success using a MP3 player with ear buds playing music at fast beat and at each beat I automaticly step out in time to the music with out having to think each step and can go from shuffle to flying in about 5 minutes. At normal shuffle I can go about a block . When automatic kicks in I can go 8 to 10 blocks. I use a wheeled walker so I dont fall and I have a place to sit and rest. It does not replace my medication.
John will be along soon.
It needs to be fast enough that your heart rate is at 80-90% capacity I believe. John’s pace is faster than I can run. I do a combo of a walk run for about 45 minutes myself
For my age that would be 120 to 140.
Mine is 125-145. It’s hard to get mine there unless I jog
So at 59 years old it looks like, based on these comments 120 heart rate, with a 10% incline for 35 minutes would get you the closest on a treadmill to what John is advocating?
My test is to see if I can TALK at all, when I think I am walking as fast as I can.
If I can say more than 2 words, then I am not walking as fast as I am able to.
If I cannot utter a word, then I am walking too fast.
I should only be able to say 2 or 3 words between breaths. That is walking as fast as I can.
For all the doubting Thomas’s out there, the only proof I have about fast walking, is that it works for me and a lot of others. If we stop the fast walking for longer than 2 weeks, our symptoms start to get worse again. Do we need any more proof than that?
I also have no proof that fast walking produces the magic protein GDNF, which repairs the damaged brain cells, enabling us to produce more Dopamine, the lack of which is the cause of Pd.
The fact that my condition continued to get worse, faster, after diagnosis, when I was taking the prescribed medication and was spending 90 minutes per day, six day a week, in the gym, tells me that exercise per se does not do anything to slow down the progression of Pd,
Some people believe that dancing and boxing help to slow down the progression of Pd, but all it does is to prove to everybody that when we consciously control our movements, we have no Pd symptoms. That changes nothing, but it does make us feel good while we are doing it!
So! Why fast walking? I do not know the answer to that one either. I think that the brain produces GDNF when we are in Fight or Flight mode. When in that mode the body produces GROWTH FACTOR FOR EVERY CELL IN OUR BODY, Growth factor repairs or replaces damaged cells. That means, if we fight and get injured or get injured trying to run away from danger then the body repairs itself, up to a point. If we did not have this ability, we would not have survived as a species. Some creatures can replace limbs and other organs.
Nobody appears to be willing to talk about GDNF! Why? It has been proven in controlled scientific studies to reverse Pd symptoms, but scientists used artificial GDNF for their studies and had to pet it directly into the brain, which is incredibly expensive. They have not done anything I know of to get the body to naturally produce more GDNF! Why? it is my opinion that it would kill the goose that lays the golden egg! That is just my opinion. Nevertheless, something that I, and many others are doing has proved beyond doubt that we are reversing our symptoms when we do the fast walking. What more can we possibly ask for?
Gosh i forgot alĺ of that mate, I got to amp it up. Thank you John, I appreciate your help
My Pleasure Cobber
Hi John,
I also think fast walking is good for PwP.
"For all the doubting Thomas’s out there, the only proof I have about fast walking, is that it works for me and a lot of others. If we stop the fast walking for longer than 2 weeks, our symptoms start to get worse again. Do we need any more proof than that?"
It would be interesting if you could make a list of all the others with similar results as you have got.
"The fact that my condition continued to get worse, faster, after diagnosis, when I was taking the prescribed medication and was spending 90 minutes per day, six day a week, in the gym, tells me that exercise per se does not do anything to slow down the progression of Pd"
There are a lot of controlled studies showing exercise is beneficial.
"Some people believe that dancing and boxing help to slow down the progression of Pd, but all it does is to prove to everybody that when we consciously control our movements, we have no Pd symptoms. That changes nothing, but it does make us feel good while we are doing it!"
Conscious movements do not make my bradykinesia disappear. I wonder if we have got the same kind of disorder. Tai chi, table tennis, and other activities have in studies showed to have long-lasting positive effects.
Maybe you can find the mechanism behind fast walking in some of the studies made for high cadence cycling. The flight and fight theory has none or little evidence to back it up.
Hi MimerI don't know whether you agree or disagree with what fast walking can do for us. But fast walking on its own is not whole story. Learning to consciously control our movements, together with the fast walking gives us the ability to overcome bradykinesia and it enables us to do the walking. send me your email address and I will send you all the info on this subject.
I respectfully disagree with the dismissal of boxing training. I began training with Rock Steady Boxing in 2007. The program emphasizes core strength, flexibility, balance, l-r coordination, strength training, aerobic training, mental challenges, perseverance, and positive family and peer support, to name a few points that help Parkies maintain a better quality of life. In 2010, with a new level of fitness I started running. In 2011, with renewed strength and determination, I ran my first marathon. Last year at 75 I ran 839 miles, a record year, at an average pace < 10:30. I could do this through God’s blessing and my boxing training.
To the original question, fast is very subjective. Two years ago following hernia mesh migration surgery to repair my infected small intestine, I gained a new respect for walking. One half mile in thirty minutes was a new challenge. Fast is your best pace being safe but slightly uncomfortable! For me now, fast is trying to keep up with last year.
Congratulations on your success and perseverance, beang. As a relative "newbie" one of my main reasons for being on this site is to learn and be encouraged by people like you. Thank you!
PD is not one size fits all. Neither are therapies. When I started boxing there were a dozen of us and no one but us knew it worked. Since then thousands around the world have benefited from the RSB program. It may not be for everyone. It is not the only answer. Mostly, speak a little louder, work a little harder, and enjoy life. Some of my favorite moments have been since diagnosis.
in reply to beang
You have reduced my nightly anxiety and greatly lifted my spirits. I have taken a screen shot of your comment for easy access so I can read it again for an emotional pick me up and motivation.
Hi beang.There are many ways to kill a cat. Is your goal to get fit or is your goal to reverse your Pd symptoms? If it is the keep fit then there are dozens of ways you can achieve that,
My goal is to reverse as many Pd. movement symptoms as I can and to keep those symptoms at the lowest level I can.
We don't only have Pd. We are just as likely to get other health problems, the same as others do, so none of us is the same.
I can only tell you how I managed to overcome most of my movement symptoms and other people have been able to do the same. If you want to do boxing or any other exercise and you have managed to reverse you Pd. symptoms then stick to it.
Good luck with what you are doing and try and stay well.
"I can only tell you how I managed to overcome most of my movement symptoms and other people have been able to do the same. If you want to do boxing or any other exercise and you have managed to reverse you Pd. symptoms then stick to it."
This is exactly my point. I have nothing against fast walking and your program in general. I admire your dedication and results. Your program may the best, but no one knows if it is. I think it would be benifical for your cause not to decry other types of exercise or invent your own theories about possible mechanisms behind fast walking.
In my humble opinion, I would suggest collecting data to support your results or/and raising money for an intervention study would be far more powerful. I would gladely donate some money for that purpose. To just back something up with anecdotal data is not enough as evidence.
I Hopefully don't decry other methods. We all have a free choice of what we want to do. The problem is that unless what we do reverses the symptoms, then the patient continues to get worse.
Not everybody tries my method and many of those that do, don't do it properly.
Here are are a few of many happy patients who did it properly:
Email from Lisa Oei
The John Pepper Story
By Lisa Oei, PT, MSPT, DPT, Founder of PD-Connect.org
May /2020
I first heard about John in Chapter 2 of Dr Doidge’s book The Brain’s Way of Healing. I picked up on the concept of “learned non-use” and made it the core teaching of my concierge private practice as a physical therapist working exclusively with Parkinson’s. To my great delight, John came to the San Francisco Bay Area to do live lectures. I attended two of them, within a week, and my client attended the 3rd meeting.
The most remarkable moments came when he took a person from the audience, usually someone in a wheelchair and he would have them go up on their toes, kick their leg out, swing their arms and then say to them, “There!! You have just done all the things needed to walk. You just forgot that you have legs. So, let us reconnect with your legs…and walk” And then, with a little encouragement and stability, these wheelchaired people would walk across the room…as the audience watched in awe.
After meeting John, I soon applied his conscious walking method to a new client; an athletic, former USA Rugby player. Standing tall, in that Pd posture, he was showing classic signs of the progression of Pd. Most prominently was his difficulty with gait and balance.
He could not walk more than a few steps without shuffling his foot. He had a lack of arm swing. And he tended to lean forward in his posture while walking.
My client was of athletic build and an avid sportsman. His passions included playing golf (he is an exceptional golfer), duck hunting, hiking, and traveling but he had stopped some of those activities for three years, notably golf, when his gait became more problematic.
We focused immediately on the techniques of conscious walking. And slowly, with extreme focus on the walking details, we set goals. First, it was to walk between two parking metres without shuffling. Next, it was between two telephone poles without shuffling. Then it was one full block without shuffling…and so on, and so on. And like in The Brain’s Way of Healing, if we talked too much, my client’s foot would shuffle. Eventually the blocks became miles on hilly sidewalks and then mountainous terrain. He commented one day about how he had gone on a very rocky and hilly hike in Arizona and he could walk very well! I remarked that when he was walking along cliff edges and boulders, he was consciously walking instead of the automatic walk on sidewalks that used to cause him to shuffle. One of the most remarkable characteristics about my client is that he applies his skills as a CEO to his Parkinson’s work. He takes each Parkinson’s symptom that comes along and addresses it like a CEO would solve a business problem. His focus, drive, and discipline at each of our sessions resulted in cumulative gains that have allowed him to do everything he wants to do in his life. The main lesson he has taken from John Pepper’s work is that walking should be the focal point of PD exercise. If you lose your ability to walk, your life shrinks and becomes difficult.
Now, he is walking eighteen holes of golf and can play two to three days in a row. He even got a new puppy to be his walking partner. His new goal is to not just meet his first grandchild, but to wrestle with them.
Email from Martin Stubenrauch
4th January 2021
Introduction
Long before she knew that she was going to share her life with a husband who would be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the early age of forty-two, my wife Karen based two dance pieces on works of neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks whose books she adored. At the time she was an acclaimed choreographer based in Philadelphia. Before it was made into a remarkable film, she found a way of translating into movement the words of, “Awakenings”, in which Sacks describes the revolutionary discovery of levodopa in the late nineteen-sixties, a drug which soon would become, and has remained ever since, the main pillar of medical therapy for Parkinson patients worldwide.
It was her again, who told me first about John Pepper. She had heard about a book by Norman Doidge “The Brain’s Way of Healing” in which the Canadian doctor illustrates through several case studies the concept of neuroplasticity as a new way of explaining the human brain. The longest chapter in the book “A Man Walks Off his Parkinson Symptoms” is based on the case study of John Pepper, who, diagnosed with Parkinson’s, was able to find a routine in regular exercise which led to a slow and gradual reduction of his symptoms to a point where he no longer had to take any medication. Mr. Pepper wrote a book describing how his health improved and unleashed a storm of incredulous neurologists. He was accused of fraud and thrown out of the Parkinson Association in South Africa where he lives. Norman Doidge, researching neurological improvements which did not fit the traditional ways of thinking about the brain, went for several weeks to Cape Town to study the case, stated that Mr. Pepper undoubtedly had PD and never healed from it, but was able to manage the symptoms by his vigilant walking program.
“I found John Pepper’s email address” my wife proudly announced. I wrote him and got immediate response. We exchanged only a few letters until he invited me to meet him in Cape Town. Sure, it is around the corner from Italy. We went.
“Degenerative, progressive, incurable” those three words are the verdict a person diagnosed with PD is confronted with. I was forty-two and had relocated eight years ago from Philadelphia to Umbria, Italy, where I successfully lead my architectural practice. I was thriving, felt invincible, had realized many of my dreams and was unstoppable on my path. I was physically strong and flexible, loved dancing, worked out at the gym and was a good swimmer.
Life has never been the same again.
My family doctor in Umbria broke out in tears when I gave him the results from the department of neurology in Spoleto. I still love him for his, “human-lack-of- professionality”, in that moment. I went to see specialists, more than one; Mrs; Prof; Dr; X; at the University clinic of Tuebingen, in Germany, who told me calmly to prepare in time for my disability as by age 60 I would most likely be in a wheelchair.
The most precise assessment up to this day however, I received from a retired professor of neurology in Perugia whose words expressed an honesty one only finds in a person who no longer needs to prove anything to the world. The only thing I can tell you for sure is, that you have this disease. I do not know for what reason. I have no clue how it is going to evolve and there is no cure. Whoever tells you different is an imposter. But remember one thing – you will lose control over your body, but not your mind. And that is a lot.”
I was made to understand that I would be for the rest of my life dependent on medication that only treats symptoms and has strong and terrible side effects, that my life would become increasingly difficult if not unbearable, that I was going to be dependent on what the Pharmaceutical Industry provided, thrown around like a rubber ball in a stormy ocean. I had lost control over my life. I might hold on to the straw of hope, that during my lifetime researchers may have a breakthrough and that it may not be too late for me to benefit from it.
For almost ten years I went through the repertory of available medication, always increasing dosage to be able to lead something resembling at least partly a “normal” life. As levodopa is known to lose efficiency over the years, I was prescribed a drug called Pramipexol, a substance which modifies the synapse’s ability to recognize the scarce dopamine left in my brain. Increasing the dosage had lead to bizarre personality changes and severe obsessive-compulsive disorders which threatened to tear my marriage and professional life apart. Only then I was given Levodopa and soon after drugs to fight depression and anxiety as I began to experience more and more fatigue, insomnia, and phobias.
It was at that point when I heard about someone on the other end of the world who claimed to have found a way to take his life back, to trick the disease, to influence his own wellbeing. Of course, I had to go to Cape Town.
1. John Pepper’s walking routine
The idea of neuroplasticity is that the human brain can still learn, for as long as we live. No matter what damage happens, the brain would be able to find ways to repair or compensate to various degrees. That is why stroke victims sometimes fully recover. The brain not only commands the body but, seems to learn from it as well. Whereas a healthy person walks without thinking about it, a PD patient loses the automatic coordination of unconscious movements. The patient can however concentrate on the movement and make it into a conscious act. (The Feldenkrais method is based on exactly on that idea.) By doing so, the body seems to give the brain feedback which in the long run increases the brain’s ability to improve complex movements by itself again.
John Pepper had no medical training, he is a strong-willed entrepreneur who discovered all this empirically after his wife encouraged him to join a program called “RUN/WALK for LIFE, (RWFL)” which foresaw an exercise routine of sixty minutes of speed walking three times a week. He started with five minutes and increased the time by five minutes every second week until he reached one hour. He then had to keep on trying to go even faster. Every walking day was followed by a resting day to give the brain the opportunity to process the received information.
2. Walking
I began in two-thousand and fifteen with 5 minutes of fast walking, at a time and I was then out of breath. Gradually I increased my time by five minutes every second week until it got to one hour (on a good day). I tried to reduce the antidepressant and the antianxiety drugs and finally stopped taking them altogether as I felt the need no longer.
Encouraged by this success, I began to tinker with the dosage of levodopa. I was very aware that I was playing with fire, that stopping to take it would be extremely dangerous and life threatening. I knew that even the option of reducing levodopa was not in the books of neurology as improvement is not foreseen for a patient with PD. I tried with 5% less. After a few days, my body seemed to adjust. I reduced by 10% and experienced the same. I reduced by 20% and had a rocky two weeks. But then gradually I started feeling better again.
The first time in eleven years I felt that I had some level of control again. I told my neurologist in Rome who was somewhat incredulous. He bought Norman Doidge’s book and got interested in the phenomenon. He reminded me never to attempt radical shifts in dosage and he underlined that PD may have many forms. He trusted me to experiment with further reduction, but in extremely small steps.
I have no idea where this is going to lead me, but I am enjoying the open-ended adventure in which I am playing an active role again.
The walking has given me a new perspective not only regarding my state of health. I begin to experience landscapes and cities in different, more intimate ways at a slower pace. This allows me new ways of seeing and thinking. I developed more and more the ability to read land- and cityscapes like books of history. I decided to document every walk with one photograph, one single thing which struck me for its beauty or strangeness, not unlike a diary.
Over the last four years I have walked with John Pepper in South Africa and in Umbria when he came to visit us, I have walked across Central Park in NY and the English Garden in Munich, along the Zambesi river in Zambia and Zimbabwe, in the savanna of Namibia, among Dutch windmills, among Mayan ruins of Mexico, in Scottish highlands, in streets of Copenhagen, Berlin, Budapest, Venice, Rome, Florence, Spoleto, Lecce and in other splendid city centres as well as in shabby peripheries, in forests and open fields, at sunrise, at noon, at dusk and at night, in snowstorms, wrapped in scarfs and gloves, and under the hot sun with a hat, on asphalt, grass, sand and mud. I went through five pairs of walking shoes – and this is only the beginning.
I am planning a visit at the University clinic of Tuebingen for my sixtieth birthday to see whether Mrs; Prof; Dr X, wants to come dancing with me.
I calculated that, should I reach the age of eighty, keeping up the routine, I will have walked forty-thousand Km – once around the entire world.
Letter from John Sinclair to His Bank Manager
February 2016
Dear Peter,
I apologize for taking so long to respond to your request. When we chatted at Clovelly Surf Club at the John Pepper seminar, you asked if I could give you some feedback as to why I attended and how it was for me. To begin, I just wanted to pass on a big thank you to yourself and your Clovelly Bank staff for sponsoring the John Pepper seminar on ‘Pd’ on 09-02-2016. I was extremely impressed with the organization of the day and thank you for putting together a second session. This allowed a few of us from Melissa McConaghy's PDW group and a friend from the Central Coast to attend.
I am 68 and have been highly active in my careers and played a lot of sport all my life; I still coach soccer. So, when I was diagnosed with ‘Pd’ three and a half years ago and tests revealed that I have had Pd for about 13 plus years, I was totally surprised. This disease as I have found out can be undetected for many years while it slowly attacks the brain.
Listening to John Pepper using laymen's terms was in-valuable. So, watching him Demo in person at the end of his talk brought a lot of hope to myself and my friends and I'm sure others who have attended his talks that there is more than hope to actually slow down Pd and in some cases REVERSE it.
My friend from the Central Coast who has advanced Pd to the point where he shuffles and shakes and needs a stick was selected for one of the Demos, and we were both amazed at what took place. When we were leaving, he passed his walking stick to me and took off through the club unassisted, down the stairs, across the parking area to his car. This brought tears to our eyes.
As you can see, this was a very wonderful day in my life and those I have spoken to re John's talk and Demos.
Thank you once again. Yours sincerely,
John Sinclair. – Australia
Letter from Pat Tolcher to Jean Blake
14th July 2016
Dear Jean
I am writing to you with my story about John Pepper.
Last February we hosted John and his wife Jeannette for their visit to Qld. We also set up two meetings in Qld for him.
The meetings were amazing. There was one elderly lady with her daughter who turned up a little late. She was having enormous trouble trying to get to her seat. Her daughter was on one side of her and me on the other supporting her and she was freezing at every step and hardly able to walk at all.
Later, when John asked for volunteers who had problems walking, she was one who asked for help. John had her walking around the room normally in no time. There were others too that were helped. One man who was sitting in front of us after walking with John kept nudging his wife and saying, ‘I did it, I did it’, with obvious joy in his voice.
People suddenly had HOPE after nothing but Despair.
I did not hear one word of dissent after the meetings only lots of ‘thankyous’ to the organizers. I must recommend John and his wife Jeannette to you. They are the nicest, most genuine, people you could ever hope to meet. John has managed to reverse his symptoms and his main aim in life now is to help other patients. Whilst they were staying with us, he spent every available spare minute answering emails from other sufferers. He probably spends several hours each day answering emails. This is not about money – just caring about other people who are travelling the same road as he has.
Pat Tolcher
Fantastic testimonials. It is inspiring to see how you have helped these people. It makes a significant difference for them.But to get attention from scientists working with a disease that affects millions of people. You probably will need a larger population and some measurement of symptom alleviation or disease progression.
Add to that, my age, which is 86, and who wants to get involved with somebody so ancient?
Glial Cell-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF)
"Nobody appears to be willing to talk about GDNF!"
Here us why they don't. GDNF is necessary for maintenance of neuronal morphological and neurochemical phenotype and protects DA neurons from toxic damage, but clinical translation from animal to clinical studies have run into problems due to multiple adverse effects of continual infusion of GDNF and crossing of BBB problems. (hence, the need for cranial infusion).
"It has been proven in controlled scientific studies to reverse PD symptoms, "
Proven only in some In vitro and in vivo rat studies. Same goes for rat studies on increasing GDNF through exercise. Actually, some research shows high intensity exercise with rats decreases GDNF while low intensity is best.
Human studies/trials with GDNF infusion vary considerably. Far from a consensus as to its value as a therapy..
Sharon
"Human studies/trials with GDNF infusion vary considerably. Far from a consensus as to its value as a therapy.."
If anyone is interested to read more about it, there is a good article at Science of Parkinsons about Transforming growth factors.
scienceofparkinsons.com/202...
"This finding raised questions as to whether GDNF would work as a therapeutic in the brain of people with Parkinson’s – if high levels of alpha synuclein reduce Ret, will GDNF be able to have any function in the Parkinsonian brain (which classically have a build up of alpha synuclein protein)?
In this 2012 study, the researchers found that GDNF could not protect dopamine neurons in an alpha synuclein model of Parkinson’s (and this result was supported by the findings of an independent research group – click here to read more about that). The researchers found that GDNF was unable to have its effect because the high levels of alpha synuclein were reducing the levels of Ret.
And this new study being disussed in this post today (Goulding et al 2020) also found that high levels of alpha synuclein in the dopamine neurons of rats resulted in a reduction of Ret protein (but not as much as the original 2012 report)."
M:
I think what you and I agree on is that a reduction Ret completely negates any a positive impact of GDNF (increased from whatever source including exercise). But why is this signaling protein apparently lost or diminished in PD?
Obviously Goulding chose to pick on the over abundance of a-syn.
Does some form of running reduce a-syn? Rat studies (Zhou) would say yes.
But X Su's rat study (2017) disagrees that a-syn blocks GDNF signaling per Golding. So exercise and the diminishing of a-syn would be irrelevant in terms of maintaining GDNF signaling.
Thus, for me, the loss of the Ret oncogene primarily via HSCR mutation dysfunctions are the independent variable here, not the over abundance of a-syn per se. Leading to neuronal death throughout your body's organs and the brain (PD and ALZ).
Regardless of why.
Sharon
What I am banging on about is the fact that the brain produces GDNF NATURALLY! Why don't scientists find ways to get the brain to produce more GDNF? I think my brain produces more GDNF when I do fast walking, which is not natural. I think the brain goes into Fight or Flight mode and in that node the body produces a host of different Growth Factors, which heal damaged cells. If we were not able to do that, we would never have survived as a species.
Why don't scientists test various different exercises to see which one produces the most GDNF?
JP:
Why don't scientists test various different exercises to see which one produces the most GDNF?
#1 They have in numerous rat models. Sacrificing humans to do the same type of autopsy to verify efficacy is considered immoral.
#2 GDNF is unable to cross the BBB unless it is somehow fused with a carrier.
#3 Exercise may not increase the amount of GDNF. Perhaps it simply improves the signaling process.
#4 Does exercise create oxidative stress that cancels out the advantages of GDNF? At the extreme stress levels, probably. But perhaps not if we believe injury induces GDNF expression.
#5 A great body of evidence supports the important negative role of microglia in the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons. Can GDNF play a role in providing anti-inflammation and limiting microglia activation? Probably.
#6 Clinical trials infusing GDNF have been disappointing.
#7 Is diet more important than exercise for GDNF? Perhaps.
#8 Is forced exercise (FE) over a significant period of time more important than voluntary? Probably
Sharon
Thanks for this Sharon! Perhaps the easiest and cheapest way to find out if my fast walking gets the results I have found, without having to guess how it happened, is to do a study on what I do!If 10 or 20 Pd patients do fast walking for 6 months, as I do, and take records each month of their UPDRS score, then compare the walking times achieved with the UPDRS scores, my bet is that the people who achieved the biggest improvement in their walking times, also had the biggest improvement in their UPDRS scores.
Then it is up to somebody to find out why!
I think that is sensible. The mechanisms behind are not as useful as the possible outcome anyway. The subjects could wear an activity band during the intervention to make it possible to collect data from pulse rate, walking distance, and cadence as well. There are cheap ones on the market nowadays for under $30. With randomization into two groups, you can have a control group to compare with that does nothing or starts their intervention six months later.I would not be surprised if you could get a university interested in conducting a small pilot study like this. It might even be suitable as a master thesis e.g. for physiotherapists.
You are assuming that a university would be prepared to speak to me! So far, nobody in the medical world is prepared to talk to me, especially if they receive funding grants from the pharmaceutical industry.
John, your theory makes sense. However we all do not have access to power walks, therefore if you had to select a exercise machine that most closely gets your body to “ fight “ forcing release of GDNF what would it be? and what would the workout routine be for that machine? Thx
I'm not John but here's my two cents: Getting the heart rate close to maximum generally involves the legs which are the largest muscle mass of one's body. 220 minus your age is the standard for maximum heart rate. I know running hard gets gets me closest to my maximum. But so might heavy weight-lifting, especially standing squats. Lastly swimming can do it also. I took a class taught by a sadist who had us swim-kicking while holding the pool's edge. He was screaming, "Go HARDER! WORK HARDER! " as we were in the pool. To know your heart rate during exercise you need a heart rate monitor.
May I venture to ask why you cannot walk outdoors? Is it weather related?
if that is the problem then the best alternative is a treadmill, but you must set it to an incline of 10% and follow the rules. If you do not have all the information then send me your email address and I will send it all to you at no cost.
It’s weather for now, or 3 - 4 months a year, otherwise okay. Vbarringer@chargercompanies.com......thanks!
I live on a narrow, single lane, winding country road in Connecticut. Jogging in this area is dangerous I believe. I'd rather be out in the sun, even in winter, but a treadmill is safer. MUCH safer than the blind curves that predominate here.
Do you set the treadmill to climbing uphill? If so to what degree? You are obviously not near a supermarket or a large indoor area in which to walk?
Do you have all my videos etc?
Good luck!
I've watched your videos. The treadmill can be tilted up to 20% grade. Generally I set it at 8 to 10% grade.
This may be comparing apples to oranges but: fitness.mercola.com/sites/f... Dr Mercola's Peak Fitness involves short, intense bursts of exercise which stimulates human growth hormone secretion from the brain. I've done this for years using a track or treadmill. He uses an elliptical trainer. I tried one but didn't much care for it. On a treadmill at 10% grade I'm on constant fear of being thrown off the back . Sounds like I'm in John's 'Fight or Flight mode'.
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